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theodp writes "Despite the whiff of danger, or perhaps because of it, the WSJ reports that the City Museum is one of St. Louis's most popular attractions. Housed in a 10-story brick building, the City Museum shows none of the restraint or quiet typical of most museums. It boasts a five-story jungle gym with two real-life jets kids can climb on, an enclosed Monster Slide that drops riders the length of three staircases, and a rooftop Ferris wheel. Sure, there are the occasional severed fingers and skull fractures, but museum founder Bob Cassilly contends that it is as safe as it can be without being a bore. 'They [lawyers] are taking the fun out of life,' says Cassilly, adding that 'when you have millions of people do something, something's going to happen no matter what you do.'"

I have climbed through their jungle gym and I must say it is quite scary. You definitely feel right on the edge of safe. Yet it stands out like no other "museum" I've been to. As such, it is quite provocative and truly unique, but contains minimal content and only satiates perhaps an hour of curiosity.

I have climbed through their jungle gym and I must say it is quite scary. You definitely feel right on the edge of safe. Yet it stands out like no other "museum" I've been to. As such, it is quite provocative and truly unique, but contains minimal content and only satiates perhaps an hour of curiosity.

"...only satiates perhaps an hour of curiosity" Only an hour??? I went there with a group of friends as a senior in college and it was the most fun I've had in my adult life! We spent about 6 hours running, climbing, sliding, jumping, and generally laughing like children. It's one of the few places where there are no rules to be followed, and the whole point is to remember what it was like to climb on everything.

"Waah, I paid admission, then went down a slide and didn't pay attention to what I was doing and injured myself so I'm suing you for $$$."

Kill all the lawyers. First step towards reclaiming society. Second step: reclaim the jury system so it's no longer twelve retards who think the defendant has unlimited funds and "can afford" to just pay out in Lawsuit Lotto.

Lawyers ARE the tyrants these days. We basically live in a lawyerocracy; look how many corrupt lawyers there are in congress, the white house, etc... it's gotten to the point where the few honest lawyers will actually tell you that NOBODY KNOWS how many possible federal crimes there are - you can't go two steps without theoretically breaking the law somehow.

The phrase "they're always guilty of something"? The lawyers made it so.

The Democrat party protects a lot of the really degenerate behavior you see from our modern legal system, because... they're a party of lawyers. Simple enough explanation, isn't it? No conspiracy theory needed.

And yeah, there are some simple reforms that we probably should implement, that we won't get until we build up the political will to do so. Most people just don't care.

OK, fair enough. But, I'm sure that at least one of their party is Jewish, but I don't see any accusations (except racist trolls, but they conflated Jews with rich people anyway) that they pass any Jew-favouring laws. You see, it doesn't follow that just because the party has x percentage of y minority, that y minority runs the party. That's because they're professional politicians, capable, on the

So they do it out of the kindness hearts? There's no collusion between them and lawyers to scratch each others backs? They are willing to alienate voters in order to pay unsolicited and unreciprocated favours to their ex-profession?

The issue is exactly that. Voters don't care, so they get away with whatever they want.

It's certainly not limited to just lawyers, of course. Generally speaking, the principle is called the Iron Triangle, if you want to read about how it works.

OK, let's examine just how absurd your position really is. If it weren't for the sheer number of fellow citizens who are so eager to think like you (which would be evidence enough that you're wrong), your opinion would be laughable.

This apathetic American... largely a myth designed to explain why people don't care about $PERSONAL_BUGBEAR. The truth is that everyone is apathetic to a great number of issues, but the reason is not necessarily because they're lazy, but because they genuinely don't think it's a

You're the lunatic who thinks that politicians who are lawyers will go out of their way to pass laws to piss off lawyers, alienating a huge money-contributing part of their base, in order to impress the small fraction of Americans that think there's serious problems with how liability works in America these days.

In other words, they don't *need* to do anything - the system is already incredibly favored toward lawyers.

You're the lunatic who thinks that politicians who are lawyers will go out of their way to pass laws to piss off lawyers

That's not what I said. That's certainly not what I meant. It's one thing to not favour lawyers. It's a completely different thing to go out of your way to piss them off. Both are completely different again to what the OP said (which is what I was responding to) that politicians favour lawyers. The implied conspiracy in that is better, for the OP, left inexplicitly stated, because, like mo

A good example of what I mean is when Health Care Reform was recently debated.

A lot of ideas were put on the table. Ideas that went contrary to the interests of lawyers (i.e. tort reform, malpractice reform, liability limitations, etc.) were *removed* from the table. So we got a kitchen sink health care bill that left the status quo in place, thus benefiting lawyers.

If the Democrats were not lawyers, and supported by lawyers, they probably wouldn't have acted to protect them in such a manner.

Perhaps the GP is just frustrated by a society that seems to be increasingly dominated by officiousness, bureaucracy and legal dogmatism. It's lawyers who tend to make that happen and people are starting to become afraid of them.

RIAA lawsuits, anyone? America has got the the point where a lawyer with an axe to grind can bankrupt a defendant without actually winning the case.

I think people are starting to question professionals in general, because after the last few years, it seems as if all they want to d

Count up the number of bad lawsuits you've seen. Count up the number of times you've been in a jury selection pool, only some dickweed shyster had you removed with a peremptory challenge because you are "too smart" and they can't bamboozle you.

The day we first had jury selection consultants is the day the justice system DIED. It just doesn't know it yet.

The rules are rigged and the game is rigged! BEWARE of any buzzwords that the political parties frequently SHARE - it means those are the best polled phrases to win you over the quickest from a broad political spectrum. It does not speak to the truth of the statement only that it is highly effective of robbing your thought by evoking emotions and conditioned beliefs they wish to exploit.

Legal terrorism is the game and the ones with the most "gunmen" tend to win the battle or by the threat; it is a "civili

Seconded. I could spend more than an hour just on the multi-story spiral slide and in the grotto surrounding it.

Not to mention the stuff they host -- a children's circus, corner shoelace maker/store, papermaking and glassblowing exhibits. And at night, live music, or the outdoor firepits w/ marshmallows provided. One of the upper floors has been converted into condos. I still dream about living on top of that festival.

My only bad experience there was checking out their petting zoo / aquatic exhibit. So

The aquarium is actually a separate business that co-occupies the space with the City Museum, as is the thrift store. That's why you have to pay a separate admission price to get into the aquarium, and you actually don't have to pay any admission if you say you're just going to the thrift store...

City Museum is one of the reasons I'd glad to live in St. Louis. Growing up in the Midwest, visits to "fun" places like New Jersey's Action Park [wikipedia.org] weren't possible. We had to settle for quarry jumping [youtube.com] and lawn darts [wikipedia.org].

I think you could use a few basic Poly Sci 100 classes under your belt. The current administration's complete failure at implementing socialized medicine does not equate in any way, shape, or form to Communism. Calling it as such would not only imply that the rest of the industrialized world was communist (which would be retarded) but would also suggest the other logical extreme that anyone in favor of small government was an anarchist.

Kids? Every time I've been there there has been a significant percentage of 20-somethings in addition to the little ones.

The museum requires [citymuseum.org] that all children are accompanied by an adult, and groups of kids must have adults in at least a 1:6 adult to child ratio. Also, it sounds like it would be fun for adults as well:-D

That sounds like an excellent compromise for allowing the kids to have reasonably safe large dose of fun.

I'll admit having 30 kids from your class running around on a playground with only one teacher supervising is probably getting a little unmanageable. 6:1 is probably a bit cagey though but isn't outrageous.

Quit taking the fun out of being a kid. Having fun as a kid is inherently a little risky. All these nuts trying to apply "five 9's" to public safety on playgrounds need to go live in a bubble somewhere and stay out of everyone else's lives.

The day they try to take trees out of the park because a kid may climb them and fall and get hurt, I'm gonna flip out.

I couldn't agree more. I would have loved this as a kid. Hell it would probably be fun now. I don't see why people get so worried, it's probably a lot safer than playing most sports, or other types of play that kids typically engage in: dodge ball, riding bikes, rollerblading, skateboarding, ice skating, base ball, etc etc.

Around me, there's still a lot of playground equipment, but not the fun stuff I played on when I was a kid. We used to have these awesome giant wooden play castle things with ropes to climb and bridges and monkey bars and all that. They've all been replaced with the colorful plastic/metal things that aren't nearly as fun and don't allow the same kind of adventure or number of ways to play. Also gone: merry-go-rounds, see-saws, cargo nets etc and anything more than about 10 feet tall. And all the woodchi

Marry-go-rounds were awesome. I remember this one thing that was a pole that was about 20 feet tall and it had a metal ring about 6' in diameter at the top. Attached to the ring were lengths of chain with a tire at the end. The whole thing would spin. You would get 3 kids on 3 of the tires and them spin it as fast as you could. Then the person doing the spinning would get on the tire, and the inertia from the 3 other people would send you FLYING. My brother ALMOST got flung off of it into a nearby trampoline.

We also used to have large swings where the top bar would be ~25-30 feet off the ground so you could swing really high. Now you are lucky to find a swing that is taller than 12'.

I can't remember where I read it -- some website about freedom for children to play etc -- but pretty much every playground in the UK has that rubber stuff installed after one child died in the 1980s. It's really expensive, and the author had estimated that it hadn't saved any lives, but if the money had been spent elsewhere (road safety, police, various options) it would have been a lot more useful.

There's still a decent amount of playground equipment around here, and it seems the same as when I was a chil

I remember people falling out of jungle gyms and breaking their arms as a kid. It's not great, but it happens. There was a woman at my college who fell backwards walking around the campus, hit her head just wrong on the cement, and died. I broken an arm riding a bike, and nearly shattered my hip rollerblading. My sister broke a finger running through the house. A friend destroyed most of the cartilidge in his back playing football. By comparison, hopping a fence, sticking your fingers into a giant rotating drum, and having them severed is just dumb.

Really, the question isn't "are there injuries?" Put a drinking fountain in a park, and given enough time and people someone is going to trip and break their teeth on it. The question is "how frequently are the injuries?" Are the injuries more frequent than other activities in life? They've had 3.5 million in attendance since 2005, and 24 known incidents that spawned a lawsuit. That's 150k people through for every known injury. Or, looked at another way, assuming each trip is 8 hours long, that's 1 injury for every 50,000 days of living. That's 1 lawsuit-worthy injury per 136 years of life.

I'd want to investigate this park specifically to see what steps they are and aren't taking to keep the play areas safe. But the numbers above just don't look bad to me.

I work in a museum of sorts, with most of it being outside. Lots of school groups visit, and I'm always disappointed when I see a group of children wearing mini high-visibility jackets. I'm even more disappointed when I see some wearing helmets for walking round (essentially) a park.

I think there are still enough daredevil kids. Youtube is filled with video of kids doing stupid things. However, It's a wonder I am still alive with the crap I did as a kid. Poring gasoline in the alley and lighting it on fire so we could ride out stingray bikes through a wall of flames. Having bb gun wars in the woods and using fire crackers as hand grenades. Taking the catwalk out to the middle of the bridge crossing the river and then riding it when the bridge opened up for a barge. http://upload.wikime [wikimedia.org]

I've been there twice each time for 3-4 hours. I recommended it to some friends. They spent 45 minutes. The reason why. Because they are boring. They did absolutely no exploring. So didn't even find over half of the place. You have to EXPLORE. You want to know what they do at barbecues and parties. Sit and played x-box with a blank look on their face and grunted occasionally when they noticed you were talking to them. This is in no way aimed at the guy who said he was only there for an hour. Actually wait. Yes it is.

Two dozen injuries out of 3.5 million people since 2005. That means over 99.999% are fine. I'll take those odds. Besides I've been there, nothings wrong, isn't anymore dangerous than any children's playground.

Two dozen lawsuits is not the same as two dozen injuries. If you figure 99% of injuries aren't going to be severe enough to warrant a lawsuit and some x% of people are going to respect what the museum is doing and not file a lawsuit even when they could the numbers don't look as good. Not that I disagree with you, need to stop taking the fun out of childhood, else we'll have a whole generation who never really grow up into proper adults.

I've been there numerous times with my kids.
It seems safer than most places because it appears much more dangerous than it actuality and the kid's natural fear instinct works just fine.
It is a much better than the inverse of actually dangerous but appearing safe (driving in the car to get there)

I just wish that the US population would get over the general reaction to anything is to sue someone.

If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid. Q - "Q Who" Star Trek the Next Generation

the judges are the ones that let the lawsuits happen in the first place. Try these in Europe, and most would never make it into the system

I would hope that the reason for that being the case in Europe, as in the U.S., is not that judges decided what lawsuits should be allowed, but that laws delineate the terms under which judges allow lawsuits. Citing judges for being responsible for lawsuits is like citing referees for responsible for people playing sports.

I have spent way too much time in this wonderland and I must say that with proper adult supervision the danger is minimal compared to the kinds of stuff we did as kids. We used to leave in the morning and come back when the streetlights came on, build treehouses with exposed nails and rotting wood, jump down from said treehouses with nothing but a pile of leaves to catch us.

This place has its share of dangers, but wow. Worth it and then some. If ever there was a place that took all my favorite childhood memories and tried to stuff them into one building it would be this one.

I met Bob Cassily a few years in St. Louis (where I've lived for 5 years) and I asked him how they deal with lawsuits. He answered: "We have a huge liability policy." Having been there at least half a dozen times, I have to agree that it can be dangerous—if you're stupid. Yes, you can climb over the railing and onto the airplane wing where you might fall 5 stories onto the parking lot. But if you're dumb enough to climb over the railing, then maybe you're doing us all a favor by removing your genes fr

I can only guess since I wasn't there, but she probably tried to lock her legs strait rather than hitting and rolling like she should have. Perhaps it was her first experiance with anything that required any sort of instinctive protective action and so she had no such instinct. We're supposed to learn those things as kids when we weigh less and have flexible bones so we don't do things like that as adults.

Having ridden all of the slides there as an adult, I can say they're all manageable. Perhaps she had on windbreaker pants or something, but still she could certainly have slowed her descent even with her hands against the slide. You pick up speed gradually on that surface, and once the fear response kicks in you do get the opportunity to react.

And common sense dictates that this must be the case. Otherwise, there would be more examples of injury, wouldn't there?

I've been to the City Museum several times, and I must say there is really no other place like it on earth. If anyone finds the museum lacking in content, I'd have to say that you're missing the point. The CM is all about interaction; you're not meant to just see everything in the plain sense, you're meant to climb, explore, and seek out the little hidden places tucked away all over the place. Almost everything about the place is entirely free-form, and that's part of the thrill. If you find that the place only satisfies curiosity for about an hour, well then I bet you're probably a pretty boring person that's way too grown up for their own good.

Meanwhile, it's so refreshing to see a place disregard all of the idiot tags we're so used to seeing everyday. Given that 99.999% of the population doesn't need to be told not to do stupid things, it's really that tiny fraction of people that makes everything always suck. The ones that make you wonder who the fuck would be stupid enough to eat the silicate pellet packs you find in new shoes, but also have the ability to read. The only place remotely similar to the CM where I live is so padded, safe, and banal by comparison. Yes, there is the risk of getting hurt in the CM, but the same thing is often true of places kids play. Even a simple jungle gym can result in a broken bone (as it did with me in the 3rd grade), but the point is to not generate boring people by sacrificing a fun life for complete and utter safety. Learning how to deal with potentially dangerous environments, yet still enjoy yourself, should be a crucial part of any kids upbringing. You have to use common sense to NOT INTENTIONALLY PUT YOUR FINGERS OR BODY IN A GIGANTIC MOVING METAL DEVICE. You shouldn't need a sign explaining why this is a bad idea. Nowhere in the CM will you find spots where good old fashioned common sense will keep you from getting hurt, and at the very least are no more risky that other theme parks/playgrounds.

I'm the parent of 3 youngsters, and we go there all the time. Without a doubt it is one of the most engaging and fun places to take a kid in St. Louis. My kids play to exhaustion every time they go. As a matter of fact, so do I. We always comment (or hear people around us commenting) on how amazing it is that, considering the risk, they have the sort of place where nothing is off limits, and if you can get to it, you can go and climb on it and play on it. Is there danger? Yes, but you can drown in a bucket of water if you try hard enough, and the fun more than outweighs any problems.

I'm just amazed by how little the WSJ article actually said about the place, seeing as how they only mentioned 1/10 of the things you can do there. And they were incorrect about the big slide. It's actually about 9 stories tall, going from the 10th floor to the 1st. Bah, the state of journalism.

And they were incorrect about the big slide. It's actually about 9 stories tall, going from the 10th floor to the 1st.

They were probably thinking of the "big" slide in the main entrance, the 9 story slide is buried deep in the caves where stuffy journalists aren't likely to go.

This place is amazing. I went with a bunch of my college student friends and we had a blast. Getting lost in the caves, finding yet another secret passage, and pummeling kids with bouncy balls (and them pummeling us right back) was incredible. The next time I visit St. Louis, I'm going back there.

Everything has warning signs, so people are used to assuming things are safe unless posted otherwise. The city museum is slightly different. You have to assume (slightly) dangerous. If your kid can't handle a Steep slide, don't let them on it.

It took me a while to grasp the concept, let go and have fun. I have hit my head, I have almost gotten stuck, but that is why it is a Must See for any guest that visits St. Louis.

I have been there numerous times to the City Museum. In my opinion, if you don't walk out of there with at least a bruise or two, you didn't play hard enough. There are rules, yes but the rest is common sense. It seems to me that these individuals that had gotten hurt didn't have any to begin with and decided to start suing.

City Museum in St. Louis is a safe place, again, you have to have common sense.

About the Alcohol part...that is only served outside in a little shack of sorts. It isn't served inside

I seem to remember when I was a kid bumps, scraps, scratches and the like were part o growing up. My parents never sued if I fell out of my neighbors tree, and cut my arm. This just seems to be the continuing trend of "you didn't tell me it could be dangous, then it's your fault, pay me"
I saw a while back that a fishing lure manufacture had to put a warning label on the package saying "harmful if swallowed" not because of the sharp hooks (as if sharp hooks aren't enough of a deterrent), but because it c

One of my youngest boys was screwing around on the front end of a cart (the best place to ride) when he got off, took a few steps ahead, then turned around and split his lip on the cart. "That's life" was my perspective. I asked for a gauze pad and some ice. The store staff were helpful. Of course, there was a report to fill out. I assured them we didn't plan to sue (after all, it was our son who was screwing around and hurt himself).

Your verbal assurance at the store wasn't enough to give them proof you'd never sue, and as long as there was a chance you'd sue, there was a chance it would cost them a cartload more than the sum they were offering you.

I'm actually somewhat puzzled that they didn't have you sign a hold-harmless agreement after one of those phone calls. Though I'm also heartened that they didn't lead with a demand that you sign a hold-harmless before making the offers.

I actually offered to sign forms over the phone, but nothing was ever sent to me. Thinking about it in hindsight, I wonder if there was some such verbage on the accident report I filled out at the store. Either way, it always seemed odd that they were so eager to cut us a check.

I lived in STL for 5 great years and took many, many visitors there. Every one of them was taken aback by the price of admission when they got there and every one was exhausted and saying it was totally worth every penny when they left.

Not only is the place a great playground for kids and adults alike, but some of the examples of architecture and industry that is displayed and incorporated into the Museum is beautiful and amazing to anyone who is into that kind of thing. The terracotta architectural piece

I have been to the CM a couple times. It is definately a lot of fun. One word of caution though, there are some places there (that i found while trying to keep up with my son) that can trigger claustrophobia.
I have to agree with others that it is a must see.

I took my one year old daughter here on her first airplane trip and we had an absolute blast. I would rank this place as one of the coolest places I have ever been, and the absolute coolest museum ever.
I did not encounter anything "dangerous" there that couldn't also be found on a standard playground.
I'm looking forward to taking her back when she's 4 or 5 and can really enjoy it. I wish there were more places like the city museum.

The playground merry-go-rounds are all gone. No longer can you sit on the edge as your sadistic friend spins it around faster and faster, trapped unless you dare to take a leap unto the asphalt or gravel.

And no longer can you spin it around round faster and faster as your masochistic friends all sit, trapped and unable to flee unless they take a daring leap unto the asphalt or gravel.

They are still around, I've seen them on plenty of playgrounds in Oregon. I use them to demonstrate the principle of conservation of angular momentum, by organizing groups of kids to lean as far out as they can while I push as fast as I can to get it going, then see how it speeds up as everybody moves to the center, and slows back down again when everybody moves back to the outside. It's not just fun, it's Physics! (And yes, I was fully aware that some of the really young children (e.g. 4 year old) particip

Gravel? When I was in elementary school the entire playground was covered in asphalt. Flying off the merry go round meant losing a good chunk of your skin as you slid across it, and yet we still all hung on to the very edge for dear life.

Those metal slides were also far superior to the plastic ones with the steel rivets that they have now. The slides today are basically static electricity collecting devices with the occasional steel discharge point to make sure kids get plenty of static shocks on the

When I was in school (in Alaska), the entire playground was covered in snow! Parkas and 3 foot deep snow make for great Rugby games! After school, we used to climb trees and jump off into snow. This became a problem once as a broken branch hidden under the snow penetrated my boot when I landed, but fortunately didn't do much damage to me.

Snow? Why, when I was a kid we played tag right there in the lava beds. Oh sure, sometimes we'd become engulfed in flames, but that was just part of the fun. The toxic volcanic gasses? Oh sure, we'd pass out from time to time, but losing oxygen to the brain is part of childhood. It never GOONURBLE affected me, gopher tooth SNARF for willing. ARF!

The only advantage of plastic slides is during the winter. Plastic slides + snow = basically a frictionless surface. Metal seems to provide a higher degree of friction in cold weather, though that could just be my impression.

Typical kid's park now has wussy plastic equipment with shredded tires on the ground. Bah!

Actually, I'm all for the shredded tires. The more padded the ground, the more risks you can take on the playground and still be able to come back to play the next day!

I mean, jumping off a swingset at it's very highest point is great fun, unless you break your ankle the very first time you do it. When I was a kid you had all the equipment but it was usually on sand. I was very glad it was sand and not asphalt when